Wednesday, December 08, 2010

I just finished the shawl collared cowl with Ball and Skein's Breckenridge yarn. I just love the softness of this yarn not to mention the wonderful colorway. I interrupted my holiday knitting because of it!

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

This past weekend always proves to me that The Gathering sponsored by NHA is a wonderful experience. I always come away with more fiber knowledge than before I arrived. This year I took a workshop on "Cutting Without Fear" with Therese Chynoweth. I came away with some wonderful finishing techniques as well as more confidence about cutting steeks and necklines. She's inspired me to finish my longtime UFO, Rona, by A Starmore. Her book " Norwegian Sweater Techniques for Today's Knitters", is a very worthwhile purchase for the serious knitter.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Sara Lamb in her workshop Braids and Bands on the Inkleloom. I need much more practice learning the pick up technique on the inkleloom, but it will be worth the effort.

Of course, I added another spindle to my repetoire, A spindle with interchangeable shafts to enable me to spin 2 or 3 cops and them ply directly from them. This is a Ken Ledbetter spindle that Ball and Skein is selling.

Monday, October 18, 2010

I finished spindle plying this wonderful merino and angora at 1 am this morning. It has a long history from handpainted dyeing to spinning and plying on my Kundert spindle. There is nothing more cherished than personally hand dyed spindle spun yarn. It's off to a hot bath to set the twist and on to the next creative step...... a delicious garment in fingering weight yarn.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

"Textiles are my religion." I can't agree more with Bhakti's quote woven into one of her works. Her presentation at Weavers Guild of RI was fascinating as she recounted her life travels to Guatamala, India and Mexico. She has traversed the world of weaving from the backstrap looms to computerized looms. She is a weaver, artist and author and a specialist in digital jacquard weaving.

She gave us a copy of one of Rumi's poems called The Guest House which addresses the yin and yang of life.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

All of you who make things with your hands understand the value of handwork whether it be spinning, knitting, weaving, quilting or some other craft. In the Slater Mill Ravelry forum a member posted this wonderful video about handwork. What I most love about the film is Renate Hiller's spinning with a rock. Renate is the co-director of the Fiber Craft Studio at the Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut Ridge, NY.

And yes, I'm off to find a rock and a stick to play with spinning some fiber. Watch the video ;her use of the stick is very interesting !

Thursday, July 08, 2010

As always I am thrilled by the opportunity to learn new techniques in spindle spinning. I took a workshop many years ago with GALINA KHMELEVA and purchased a Russian spindle. Ever since that workshop I have played with spinning on this type of spindle and not succeeding. Just lately I acquired a beautiful walnut Russian Spindle due to Iris's influence.

Then thanks to Habetrot's video link I found a very interesting approach to spinning on a Tibetan spindle which seems very much like the Russian spindle . I particularly like how the spinner wraps the newly spun singles on the middle of the shaft. This appears to make it much easier to spin new singles since the singles wrapped mid shaft gives the yarn that climbs up the shaft some traction. Later she unwinds the singles at the middle using a figure eight movement and then neatly rewinds the singles closer to the bottom of the spindle.

Friday, July 02, 2010

As we well know gardening has its highs and lows. Today I had the fearful task of removing poison ivy from the backyard. Armed with several clipping devices and dressed to the teeth in old clothing that covers the entire body I began clipping away. No. I didn't get all of it....I never do, but I got enough to satisfy me.

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Saturday, May 22, 2010

For more reasons than you'd like to hear I've been busy with work and more. My garden has been delighting me more and more each day. I'm totally in love with my Snow in Summer!!! I've finally found a place it loves in my front yarn. It has repaid me with a stunning production of flowers. Also my Amsonia is in full bloom with her pale blue flowers. But is she ever tough to dig out. Beware the star plant's tenacious root system. I was able to dig out some small sections to pass along to other perennial lovers.

I have been knitting. Iris, you need to know I've dropped Rona again, but I'll go back. I started another drop stitch scarf in a great handpainted yarn I purchased at The CT Sheep and Wool Festival. This leads me to another yarn purchase at RI Sheep and Wool festival last weekend.....a drop dead gorgeous red cashmere skein. Naturally, I didn't stop there! I found some lovely buttons made by Katy aka Katrinkles. They are soooo lovely. The pics are below.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Many moons ago.....June of 2007 to be exact I began a lace journey that taught me the value of counting stitches and not fudging when it counts. I am happy to say the Swan Lake stole is drying after I blocked it this morning.

Thank you Pink Lemon Twist for this KAL! Thank you, Iris for starting this project with me while we read our charts on music stands in your backyard. You were also there at the finish line. I knitted the stole with Jaggerspun Zepher Wool-Silk 2/28 in Indigo. I purchased two balls ( 630 yds each) from Sarah's yarns. I actually used 1 and a half balls or 3 oz of the yarn.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Last Sunday was a fine day for the outdoor sport of knitting.I worked industriously on my Lace Ribbon Scarf made of some hand spun alpaca, silk and angelina. Several RI Spinning Guild members hit Oakland beach for an afternoon of sun and fun. Some trotted over to Iggy's to get lunch while the rest of us knitted and spun wool while soaking in the sun and breezes. Over to our left were some talented Hula Hoop dancers. They could move that hoop so hypnotically that Ms. Marva was green with envy as were the rest of us. I remarked that in my heyday I did indeed use the hula hoop. Well..............one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was on the grassy island doing this and celebrating spring! Pictures courtesy of Mr Dubyah.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Last week I had a lovely surprise. I received an honorable mention at the RI Watercolor Society Flower Fantasy show for one of my watercolor paintings.Thanks to the encouragement of DH,Ellie, Carol and Rick, I entered the show.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I never tire of spinning ,plying and creating a skein of yarn! It's wonderful to twist the skein and observe its color and feel its texture. Such a simple pleasure that precedes thoughts of what possibilities lie ahead. This skein could become a cowl or a shawl. I've got time to play with creative decisions. On the other hand it may simply be a lovely skein.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

As a lover of literature and a English teacher for many years, I was grateful for the works for JD Salinger. I particularly enjoyed teaching the novel, The Catcher in the Rye to many high school students over the years. In today's Providence Journal Editorial section I read the article below. Cosell is right on the mark with her analysis of the novel as Holden's spiritual quest. If you've never read the novel pick it up. It's worth the read.

Hilary Cosell: To Allie, with love and squalor

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 4, 2010

By HILARY COSELL

NEW YORK Jan. 28, 2010

July 18, 1946

The first date marks the recent death of author J.D. Salinger. It was front-page news, along with the obligatory assessments of his literary output and opinions about his final resting place in American letters. Most of the conversations centered around his famous novel, “The Catcher in the Rye.” Does it stand the test of time? Is it still “relevant”? Or is it “dated” adolescent angst and alienation, penned by an alienated adult who chose to become a recluse?

I answer those questions with the second date, a date engraved forever on the psyche of Holden Caulfield, “Catcher’s” troubled adolescent narrator: the date that his brother Allie Caulfield died.

“He’s dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You’d have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent.”

Salinger devotes less than two pages early in the novel to Allie’s death, and in a brilliant literary move, Allie is rarely mentioned by name after that. Yet he is everywhere in the novel, a misty presence, a motive force underlying Holden’s alienation, depression and misery. When Allie died, Holden slept in the garage at their summer home that night and proceeded to break all the garage windows with his fist. Then he tried but failed to break all the windows in the family station wagon, too. “It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie.”

You didn’t know Allie. Is that really true? For it always seemed clear to me that the reader does indeed know Allie, if the reader can be persuaded to look beyond multiple references to sex, pimples, phonies and the disastrous meeting with Sunny the prostitute, to Holden’s shattering loss. A child brother, killed by cancer. A randomly chosen victim, for whom there was no cure and no savior.

“It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it.” To express deep pain in a violent and partly self-destructive act (his hand was mildly but permanently injured) may not be desirable, but nor is it “stupid.” Honesty should compel us to admit that such acts often take place as a last, desperate release of intolerable torment. It has never failed to both surprise and confound me that Allie’s death and Holden’s response to it are rarely, if ever, much explored in critical and classroom studies of the novel.

Near the end of the novel, Holden tells his sister, Phoebe, that if he had his choice he’d want to stand in a field of rye where thousands of little kids are playing. At the edge of the field is a cliff. Holden would be the only “big” person around, standing on the cliff’s edge.

“What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean, if they’re running, and they don’t look where they’re going. I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

In typical Holden fashion, he may have the words wrong — the Robert Burns poem is, “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” But Holden’s wish is not crazy in the least. His catcher in the rye makes utterly perfect sense. He could not save Allie from death. But as the catcher in the rye he can save all those other children at risk. It is a hope for salvation and redemption. Read more deeply, look beyond the universal adolescent angst that Salinger portrays so vividly, and you will find a universal spiritual quest. This writer suggests reading “The Catcher in the Rye” as Holden’s search for God in a godless world.

Salinger’s critics have bemoaned his obsession with children and with innocence. I’m not sure I would describe the clear-eyed, uncompromising Phoebe Caulfield, or the genius Glass children, stars of the “It’s a Wise Child” radio show, as “innocent.” Some critics have also derided Salinger’s increasing interjection of theology into his work, be it the “Jesus Prayer” and Christianity in “Franny and Zooey” or his later exploration of Hinduism, Zen Buddhism and other Eastern theologies in the Seymour writings.

But read “Catcher” carefully and the seeds of those later themes are planted in Holden’s story. Salinger’s evolution into theological themes should not necessarily be a surprise.

As James Joyce, a “theological author” if ever there was one, once said, “In the particular lies the universal.” The sacred is everywhere, if one just looks for it.

Thank you, Mr. Salinger, for giving us not only a glimpse of the sacred, but for your spectacular contribution to American literature and American life.

Hilary Cosell, an occasional contributor, is a Connecticut-based writer and a master’s-degree candidate at General Theological Seminary, in New York.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Today thanks to Iris I had a grand lesson on a Knittrax knitting machine.With Iris's help I was able to knit a sock blank of 450 yards of sock yarn I purchased from RI Handspun.She is seated at the machine demonstrating how to recover some stitches